The present invention relates to the field of doors for openings in buildings or monuments, specifically high-security buildings or monuments, such as nuclear power plants, and also relates to a sill and opening-leaf assembly for a door that is essentially fluid-tight to a liquid or gaseous fluid and is intended to seal an opening separating two spaces in a building or monument.
It is known that the sill is the element that is situated across and at the bottom of the opening of a door separating two spaces of a building or monument, and functions primarily to ensure that the bottom part of the door, in the closed state, i.e., the empty space between the lower edge face of the of the opening leaf of the door and the floor or ground surface, is protected from infiltrations of air, water or dust.
However, a sill usually has a step-like appearance forming an obstacle in the lower part of the door opening, which poses a problem in terms of a height to be cleared, in particular for the wheels or casters of the wheelchairs of persons with reduced mobility, or those of carts or other rolling objects supporting materials or products that are particularly sensitive, especially in the filed of high security, such as in the nuclear industry, which requires flat or nearly flat rolling surfaces without any obstacles to clear.
A known solution to this problem consists in installing transportable sill-clearing ramps which adapt to various heights of sills and which are placed thereon.
However, although these ramps enable the obstacle effect produced by current sills to be reduced considerably, the structure thereof comprises two clearing slopes which necessarily require an inclination of the rolling cart, which can be detrimental to the material or products transported by same. In addition, considering the security conditions required in certain types of high-security buildings, these transportable ramps cannot always be stored close to the door or on a mobile cart. On the other hand, they need to be installed and removed upon each opening and closing of the door, which is restrictive to the person crossing over same.
The aim of the present invention is to overcome these disadvantages by proposing a door sill and opening-leaf assembly that is fluid-tight to a liquid or gaseous fluid, which is permanently installed and does not create any obstacle or clearing slope in the lower part of the door opening, in particular as concerns the wheels or casters of a cart or other rolling object, while at the same time providing an effective fluid-tightness of the bottom part of the door concerned, with respect to gaseous or liquid fluids.